


Evan Ames Rises Up

by Flora (florahart)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Extremely Dubious Consent, Other, Possession, mindfuckery, non-gory horror, trickery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-13
Updated: 2013-01-13
Packaged: 2017-11-25 10:06:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/637742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/Flora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was written for the Bring Back the Bastard fest on LJ (community: deeply_horrible, originally posted <a href="http://deeply-horrible.livejournal.com/9539.html">here</a>), the purpose of which was to write stories in which Snape was as horrible/nasty/mean as he was supposed to be in canon.  The prompt to which I wrote was <i>Post-DH. Snape's ghost possesses someone. He does it much more slowly, subtly and successfully than Voldemort did. No unicorn-blood required; Snape was MUCH better at potions than Voldemort was. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Evan Ames Rises Up

**Author's Note:**

> I chose not to use the archive warning for noncon/rape because I feel like what folks expect that to mean is probably something more violent than what I wrote and also because I'm not so sure that tag would be all that accurate (?); however, I do want to make clear that there is extremely manipulative, coercive stuff involved with a sexual relationship which it's not at all clear the other party would participate in willingly, at least given the circumstances. So: the consent is at best extremely dubious. Please exercise care as needed. 
> 
> Thanks to snegurochka_lee for beta help, rushed as I was.

"Sir?"

Kingsley shook his head and tried again to focus on the scroll before him, noting that once again, the shadows had crawled longer on the page while his attention wandered. "Apologies," he muttered.

"It's no problem, sir," Percy said. "Only, are you quite sure you're all right?"

Kingsley blew out a breath, impatient and suddenly, unaccountably, annoyed. Percy was kind, and there was no call to berate him for his concern, but the urge was strong never the less. Strong, and strange. He ignored it. "Just feeling my age," he said at last. "You youngsters might tolerate the kind of pace and duration of the battle and the cleanup, but I'm a little... past the days of hard partying, I suppose. I'm not recovering as well as I might have, twenty years ago." It had been three unbelievably busy days since Voldemort fell, and he felt like he'd hardly slept a moment, even if the clock said otherwise.

Percy chuckled. "Sir, you're not old, but I agree. It's been exhausting." He bent to gather the armful of scrolls. "Once I'd have argued that the ethical and morally upright man ought to remain at his desk until everything is done--"

"Once?" Kingsley asked, arching a brow of doubt.

"If once means for one lengthy but uninterrupted period," Percy said. "But I take your point. In any case, we've weeks, probably months of work yet to do, sir. The page before you is the only thing that we truly must work through this evening, and we're nearly done. Half an hour more, I think."

Kingsley nodded and looked at the organizational chart on the table, rolling his shoulders. "All right. Before we can move on to anything else, we _must_ make final decisions on the magical containment teams." 

There were dozens of people working, of course, mostly assigned by proximity and dumb luck, but the initial evaluation had identified three discrete places where a focused team should be put in place for the longer term: the sparking, ravaged remains of the Room of Requirement; the heart of Diagon Alley, where perhaps hundreds of incompatible charms had merged and rebounded off each other willy-nilly when the walls between businesses had come down uncontrolled, either because of actual fighting or because owners had tied wards to themselves; and the deep levels below the collapsed Ministry, where the Unspeakables had Merlin only knew what going on, but it definitely included time, space, and energy, and probably, for good measure, a healthy sprinkling of blood.

He wasn't entirely sure they _had_ enough experts still standing to contain everything, and guessing what to deal with first was risky. They hadn't had time to assess whether any of the three was likely to unwind itself in a critical and destructive manner sooner than any other.

He rolled his shoulders again and started writing out a list, duplicating it with a wave onto Percy's scroll. "I'll list people I feel good about assigning sections to and what I know offhand about their skills. You assign them to one of the three based on whatever criteria make sense to you, and when we've got to the end, we'll see how we've done for balance. Cross off anyone who's dead."

Percy nodded and started assigning witches and wizards, rearranging as he went and muttering his hopes of winding up with an arrangement that made sense without changes. At the twelfth name, he paused. "Snape, sir? He's--you _know_ he's dead."

Kingsley _did_ know; he'd dealt with the body himself. He frowned and shook his head, thinking fast before explaining, "I'm just making a list. You're weeding out the impossible."

Percy nodded and went back to sorting, and Kingsley let out a breath and promised himself there would be no more reason to doubt his competence.

\//\\\/

Waking in his own bedroom and finding it unfamiliar for a long heart-stopping second was a strange and unwelcome experience, and one Kingsley had had three times now. This time he'd actually begun looking for weapons--ingredients, objects, anything with which to incapacitate his abductor--before he'd managed to shake his head and clear away the cobwebs enough to recognize his own fucking blanket. This had to stop.

There were three possibilities, and Kingsley didn't like any of them. He was cursed, or he was ill, or he was possessed. There had to be some reason he was losing time some days and losing his place others, and he couldn't think of any option that didn't boil down to one of those. But any step he might take--seeing a mediwizard, or asking for the assistance of a curse-breaker, for instance--any of those would put a huge dent in his career, because one could not successfully be Minister for Magic by starting out with a breakdown, now could one?

It wasn't, he assured himself, purely personal. He was keeping the needs of the wizarding world firmly in mind, and if he thought he couldn't do the job--he didn't know what he'd do. Because another transition this quickly would be devastating for the people just beginning to move past burying their dead and rebuilding their homes.

Well, it didn't matter. He was doing the job, and doing it well, so it hardly mattered what he'd do if he couldn't. And the time losses… they were no worse than he'd experienced working for Dumbledore, being two places at once a couple of times a week, right, making everyone believe him to be things he wasn't?

Kingsley paused and frowned as he tried to remember where he'd lost his train of thought.

Well, perhaps it was only a symptom of exhaustion. He was still working himself to the bone, after all, and honestly, he had been for _months_ , helping out with the underground news and the like.

He resolved to get at least six hours of sleep every night, seven when he could manage it, and made a note on his scroll to have Percy clear his calendar at least two evenings next week, even if it meant doubling or tripling up engagements the other nights.

Then he unrolled the scroll before him and reread his notes, ignoring the crabbed editorial scrawling in the margins. Whatever he'd been thinking about while he was 'gone', he suspected it might not make for good policy to use it as a template for any reforms without a true good night's sleep first.

\//\\\/

"What got into you last night?" Andromeda asked against his jaw. "I've never seen you like that before."

Kingsley opened his eyes slowly, looking up at the intricate pattern edging her bedroom ceiling, and tried to remember what he'd been like. And whether _this_ instance of waking up somewhere strange was like the others, or was, in fact, waking up in an unfamiliar place. Damn, he wasn't sure. He turned to look at her. "I have no idea," he said.

There was a nagging sense in his belly that felt like pride, but he wasn't sure what he had to be proud of--well, no, that wasn't true; he was naked in Andromeda's bed with her, so he assumed they'd fucked, and that was definitely new, but that didn't explain why he was _proud_ of it.

"I've known you a long time," she said, "and I think I've seen you in a lot of moods, but the possessiveness, the eagerness, the urgency… you're usually a very controlled man."

"Sometimes a man has to let go a little," Kingsley said. Her hand was on his belly, sliding down to grip him, and on the one hand, the familiarity was appropriate to a pair in their fifties waking up together; on the other, he'd never touched her before, and never _wanted_ to. 

Not that she was unappealing, in the abstract, but Kingsley's tastes, while broad, had generally run more toward cock all his life, and right now, it seemed all he wanted was to turn toward her and push her onto her back, to sink into her again and watch the woman who looked so like Bellatrix relax beneath him as Bella never had.

…And where the hell had _that_ come from? Andromeda did look like her sister, but Kingsley had _definitely_ never fucked Bellatrix, for his own pleasure or any other reason. And had never wanted to.

He groaned and suppressed a shudder by stretching his body long. "What time is it?"

"Early," Andromeda said. "Unless you have a breakfast meeting, there's probably time for…" Her hand gripped, and Kingsley realized he was hard in her hand, as though he wanted this. She lifted her head and grinned at him. "And if you do, we could always shower together."

Obviously he could extricate himself--there were excuses, and there were reasons, and he _did_ have an early meeting, but Kingsley smiled and let her kiss her way down his chest. He'd think of a way to get out of this later, and for now, he'd let her make him come. A man had to take his opportunities where he found them, after all.

\//\\\/

The list was complete and he'd checked it himself this morning, but Kingsley felt nervous as he stood waiting to speak to the gathered ministers. Many, many positions were vacant still, with a dozen men and women serving as Acting Ministers awaiting confirmation, and Kingsley knew he needed to resolve that as soon as possible, but a part of him liked the instability of temporary appointments (even if they would be permanent soon enough). A part of him liked the way that each of the unconfirmed Ministers had to keep sucking up, knowing they could be replaced at any time, and that very fact was all he really needed to know that something was very, very wrong with him. 

Kingsley _liked_ stability. He _liked_ the idea of staff under him working autonomously and independently, making their own choices and reporting back not out of a fearful sense of duty, but because they were doing a good job. Between this, the blackouts, Andromeda--who in no way deserved the way he was treating her, if only in his own head--and the strange and creeping sense of watching himself he'd felt increasingly over the past several days, he was going to have to find a way to talk to someone.

But not today.

He cleared his throat and stepped up to the podium to read the list of honorees.

As expected, his intent to offer Severus Snape the posthumous Order of Merlin brought forth a roar from the crowd. He'd known it would, and he watched them shouting and bickering, and suppressed the urge to laugh.

"He died a hero," Kingsley said firmly, once the rumble had died down.

"He died because he was reporting to Voldemort," someone shouted.

"I wasn't," Kingsley said, and then realized that made no sense. He waved a hand to quiet the crowd, and added quickly, "I wasn't suggesting anything else. But that was part of his heroism: maintaining his cover even when it killed him."

"He didn't expect it to kill him," said someone else. Kingsley noticed that only the surviving Ministers from before the battle were arguing with him, and he suppressed another laugh. 

"I suppose we can't know," he said. "But I think the Potter br-- I think the boy might say otherwise. Don't you?"

The crowd rumbled some more, but Kingsley felt sure they were coming round, and he continued his reading of the heroes.

\//\\\/

Kingsley stopped and looked at the graffiti on the low retaining wall as he walked toward his flat. _Evan Ames rises up_. It was stylized writing, like a lot of graffiti, but it occurred to him, as he reached a finger toward it, that this was _wizarding_ graffiti, carved in with a charm rather than sprayed on with brightly-colored paint. And that was…weird. The decision to live in a Muggle part of London was one he'd made thoughtfully two years ago, under the belief that he was a better Auror and now a better Minister if he understood the world that surrounded them, and he didn't think he'd ever seen anything of the sort in the area. 

He'd seen the text before, though, half a dozen times around town, and he wondered casually who Evan Ames was. And why he'd never heard of him.

Maybe once everything else was seen to, he'd set Percy to work finding out. He walked on toward his flat.

It was chilly when he arrived, chillier than he'd ever let it get deliberately, and he shivered as he unwound his scarf and hung it next to the door. Strange, since he hadn't touched the Muggle thermostat in two months, and even if he had, there were charms in place as well. Twenty degrees was appropriate for December, and he let it drop below that during the day when he was never home anyway. But now it was nearly eight, and if he wasn't mistaken, his flat was closer to fifteen degrees than twenty.

He went to look at the meter.

It was set at sixteen, and when he went to move the control, a sharp spark shocked him. It felt familiar and strange, and he stared at the device for a moment, then nodded. Sixteen was more appropriate anyway; there was no need to keep it overly warm, and it wasn't like there was dampness or a draft in here.

He went to the kitchen and put on the kettle, then turned to the refrigerator and pulled out the wide tray he kept on the second shelf. It was just as well he didn't need the refrigerator to keep food in; it was barely adequate for the ingredients he wanted to keep on hand.

The water boiled, and Kingsley turned away from the lacewing he was shredding on the block of polished nonreactive steel he kept on the counter to lift the kettle with his wand and pour the hot water over unremarkable tea. It smelled bitter and dark, but all he needed was the assistance staying awake again, attention sharp and present. He didn't require flavor, so it would do. He put the kettle back in place and let the tea steep while he finished the lacewings, scraped them carefully in a jar, and poured in low-grade firewhiskey to infuse. He put the jar on the shelf and scourgified the steel block, then went to sit in the front room with his newspaper and the tea, idly considering where to begin if, in a month or so, he had the resources and the time for a trip into the heart of the continent. Half the presidents and ministers of Europe wanted a moment of his time--a moment of his reassurance, more like. It was annoying, and hardly his problem, but there it was.

When he set aside his cup and went to bed early, it felt as though he was leaving something incomplete, but for this evening, all he wanted was to rest.

\//\\\/

"Sir, you need to eat."

Kingsley looked at Percy and arched a brow. "Do I?"

"I don't mean to pry or overstep, but you have to have lost three stone now, sir. I know it's just stress, but--"

"Three stone? That's ridiculous." Kingsley looked down at his loose-hanging robes. "And what are you doing, keeping track of my weight?"

"Only, you've had so much trouble with focus, and you don't sleep…" Percy flushed. "And you used to be so imposing--not in a bad way."

"And now?"

"Now you're gaunt and thin--and not a little bit gray about the edges, if I'm honest--and people are starting to ask if you're quite well."

"And you tell them…?"

"I've said nothing, of course, except to note that you've the most stressful job in Britain just now."

"You don't defend me?"

Percy blinked. "I--I do, but I didn't suppose you wanted me commenting on your body to the general public."

Kingsley pursed his lips. "And if you did, what might you say?"

"Sir?"

"Might you tell them that my body is as appealing as ever?"

"I would never--sir, that would be too personal, and too…"

"False?"

"No, but what I like is hardly at issue here."

"Isn't it?" Kingsley considered Percy, who he knew, intellectually, he'd once found as appealing as his appallingly-straight father, and then let the subject drop. He picked up his fork and moved his fried vegetables about on his plate. Nothing tasted right any more, of course, like his mouth didn't fit in his head, but if people were starting to talk, he supposed he'd have to choke something down. Or at least make a show of it.

"It isn't," Percy repeated. "And don't think I don't see you rearranging, there. I had four younger siblings, you know, growing up."

"How fortunate for you." Kingsley heard his bitter tone in his own ears and frowned, then took a bite of cabbage as though he'd meant to all along. He'd always liked cabbage.

Percy sighed. "Well, and three now, so that part isn't so fortunate, but in any case, you like some of them well enough."

"Yes, the ones old enough not to be any trouble, skulking about as they do, getting into all manner of mischief."

"I hardly think you've much of that to worry about these days, sir." Percy set a thin file down next to Kingsley's plate. "When you've finished, have a look at this."

"What is it?" Kingsley's voice went sharp, gruff, and he snatched up the file.

"Nothing so urgent as all that. It's a symbol, I suppose. The Aurors think it might need watching."

Kingsley looked at the same bit of graffiti he'd noted outside his flat, and shrugged. "Teenagers, perhaps. Is there a reason to believe--"

"Hestia Jones asked that I bring it to you. She said you'd have seen it before."

"Did she?"

"She seemed quite certain."

Kingsley traced the letters, _evan ames_. "Well, perhaps she was mistaken," he said. He was proud of his mild tone, because his finger longed to shake against the page.

\//\\\/

The conversation with Hestia had been short, and not particularly productive--he'd called her to his office as soon as Percy had been off on an errand, and he'd asked her straight out why she thought the Minister for Magic would be interested in the activities of hooligans.

She'd looked him in the eye and asked if he'd changed his mind, and what was that supposed to mean? 

They'd gone round a few times with that, her unwilling to explain herself and him definitely not prepared to reveal that he had no bloody idea what she was talking about, and finally, he'd shaken his head. "That will be all," he'd said, and she'd squinted at him.

"Sir, if you don't mean for me to watch for it, it's fine. I certainly don't care one way or another whether Evan Ames, whoever that might be, is a hooligan or the leader of a gang or a clever business courting the youth with a marketing scheme. But I don't know why you want to question me about it."

He'd waved her away with a "Very good," and she'd backed off from the desk like he was a stranger or a suspect. And now he had that to worry about, on top of what to do about his ongoing association with Andromeda and her growing grandson, and that was a problem.

Damn.

When Percy returned, he was tracing the edges of the figure carefully with the tip of his wand, the feeling of it off-center in his hand, as it always was, of late. He wished Ollivander were well, or that he had time to make a trip overseas to buy a new one.

"Sir?"

"Just mulling," he said. He didn't look up. "What do you suppose it means? _Is_ there an Evan Ames?"

"Not that I know of, sir, but I could check."

Kingsley shook his head. "I imagine it's some sort of pseudonym. Who would use his real name to write all over the city like this?"

"I don't know." Percy paused, then said, "I ran into Harry just now. Potter, that is. He'd like a meeting, if you can manage it; says he has something of Snape's and needs unbiased advice about what to do with it."

Kingsley looked up sharply. "Has something of--why?"

"I haven't the first idea where he'd have got something of Snape's or why, of course. I'm afraid that during the several years prior to the re-emergence of Voldemort, I made myself something opposite of a confidant for him."

"No, why does he want _my_ advice over something like that?" Kingsley's belly had gone cold, and he felt as though his chair might be crumbling even as he sat in it. "Surely there are others who knew the man better than I did--which isn't to say anyone knew him well; as far I know, that was impossible.

"He doesn't want to bother anyone, but apparently feels you've some special insight. You know what he's like; he gets ideas that seem a bit off to most of us, but then bugger if he's not been right all along about some things." Percy shrugged. "I can put him off, if you'd rather."

"Not that it will do any good," Kingsley growled. "The boy is persistent, and I don't know that I've ever seen him drop something when he bloody well should." He shook his head and took a moment, wondering why the Potter boy's interest was so worrying to him--wondering why in the world he would object to a simple interaction which certainly would end with a simple transfer of materials into his own rightful possession and that would be the end of it. Finally, he shook off the feeling and asked, "When does he propose to meet?"

"I didn't schedule it yet; it's a bit off the list of your usual appointments, so first I wanted to confirm with you that it would be all right."

"Excellent. Well, find a time. Next week if you would." Kingsley set the folder aside and held out his hand. "Now, what else have you for me?"

\//\\\/

The chill in Kingsley's flat annoyed him unreasonably, and at half past three, he threw back the cover and went to examine the thermostat again. He wasn't sure why he'd adjusted it downward in the first place, but it was too bloody cold and there was just no reason. He had the money--both in Galleons and in pounds--to pay for adequate heating, and there was just no reason to tolerate being cold any more. He turned the serrated edge of the dial up a couple of notches and went back into his bedroom to bundle up in his bathrobe until the heat came up. There was no reason not to get a bit of work done while he waited, and he took himself off to the kitchen to make a cup of tea and see how the distillation process was going for the stewed Grindylow webbing.

He'd only just turned on the pot when the sudden urge to look outside seized him, and he went to the door. He checked for the paper--too early, not yet--and looked out into the road, but he had no idea why he'd come out. Perhaps he'd just take himself over to Andromeda's house and let himself in. She'd said he was welcome at any time, after all, had she not?

When he turned back toward his own door, though, the familiar graffiti greeted him, and he paused as a thought edged to the forefront. The Potter boy wanted to see him, did he? Well. Perhaps a late-night visit _there_ was just the thing--he'd get him to spit out what he knew, and then he'd take back the bloody memories and be done with it.

He went back in and doused the fire under the kettle, then picked up his wand and changed his bathrobe for something a little more formal. 

Potter was still staying at the Grimmauld Place address, as far as he knew--and he did tend to keep an eye on that sort of thing--and he Apparated there with a pop.

The place was dark, as he'd expected, and he paused on the stoop, then let himself in. The remains of a banked fire glowed orange in the fireplace, and the sitting room was still. Kingsley headed up the stairs.

"Master is asleep," the decrepit old House Elf informed him at the landing. 

Kingsley shrugged. "He asked to see me. My time is valuable."

The Elf scowled, but didn't try to hold him back, and he continued on up.

When he reached the bedroom Potter had used --hadn't he? Kingsley's memory blurred slightly, as though he was seeing the same image from two different angles, and he stopped with his hand on the knob. This was the right room, was it not? He frowned, the turned the handle and let himself in. "Potter."

"Minister." Potter was up, and sitting in the chair near the fireplace, and before Kingsley could respond to _that_ little surprise, the door closed behind him and a petrifying charm--a gentle one; he had to give them that--had frozen him in place. A cushion formed itself beneath him and he was lowered, slowly, onto it by the two oldest of the Weasley offspring.

"Percy didn't know, in case you're curious," Potter said. 

Kingsley wanted to roll his eyes, but didn't really have a choice about that.

"So," Charlie said, pulling up a chair. "Here's the thing. Harry says he's pretty sure you're possessed, and Gin agrees. I think the both of them know a thing or two about possession--"

"And I know a lot of things about curses," Bill put in from behind Charlie. "So, we thought we might take the opportunity of Harry giving back whatever of Snape's he has--"

"Memories," Harry put in. "Dumped all over me as he died."

Kingsley's skin shriveled and crawled at that, and it felt as though his intestines did as well. The moment of death was--he hadn't entirely considered it, until now, and how had he forgotten?

"--to see whether that was the case," Bill went on, "and if so do something about it. So. I'm pretty sure I can control any hexes or curses you might try if we let you up, because according to Harry, you have the wrong wand entirely and most likely you'd be arguing with yourself about whether to cast them. However, I don't know that I'd be able to stop you from doing anything stupid to yourself."

"But if you promise you won't," Harry said, "I'll believe you. Both of you."

Kingsley waited as Charlie took his wand from his pocket and secreted it away--"Don't worry, you won't be able to call it back," he said firmly--and as Bill released the petrification charm. When he sat up, Kingsley tried anyway, but the wand stayed where Charlie had put it. He let them put him in the open chair and didn't try again.

"Kidnapping the Minister for Magic is not the sort of thing even the great Harry Potter can get away with," he said.

"Not really kidnapping. More exorcising. I'll let you go, once we've dealt with the problem." Harry shook his head. "And the way you said that just there--you're not exactly helping relieve my concerns. Now. Your word?"

"I suppose you think you've some way to tell whether I'm lying?" Kingsley asked.

Harry shrugged. "Either of you alone is a good Legilimens, and skilled at Occlumency, besides. But sir, you're working against each other, sometimes. I'll know." He grinned. "Plus, if I'm not sure, there's always Veritaserum."

"Please," Kingsley spat. "Anyone might learn--"

"Yeah, but you taught me to make it better, right?" The firelight reflected off Harry's glasses as he turned his head. "So, do I have your word?"

"Have I a choice?"

"Yes, actually," Bill said.

"What he means is," Charlie added, "Bill and I mostly only care about getting the second mind out of your head. Harry's the one that has some ridiculous notion about saving both of you."

"It's my speciality," Harry said dryly. "You remember that, surely?"

"Of course." Kingsley sighed. "Fine. You've my word."

"And you, Snape?"

"Snape?" Charlie said, startled.

Bill looked at his brother with an arched brow. "Who else was going to go invading the Minister's mind--who else had the chance?"

Kingsley shrugged. "I don't know how to persuade you mine is the only voice."

Harry narrowed his eyes and pointed his wand, sketching in the air to draw up the Evan Ames artwork. As Kingsley watched, the letters rearranged themselves. "He knew I'd seen this," Harry said. "I couldn't help but work it out." The letters floated in the air before them all: _I am Severus Snape_.

"Oh," Kingsley said. He shook his head, frowning at the memory of a hundred gaps in the days since the battle, at the way he'd changed everything from his food to his habits to his bloody sexuality, and merely said again, more quietly, "Oh."

Harry shrugged. "And if you can't let him talk, well. _Legilimens_!" Kingsley felt the cool rough invasion--the boy had no finesse, but he did have the power, he thought absently--and let show everything he could, until finally it stopped, and Harry sat back. "He'll do." 

"So, now what?" Kingsley asked. "You can't mean to excise half my mind and no one the wiser."

Harry shook his head. "Charlie?" Charlie reached behind him for a bag Kingsley hadn't previously noticed, and Harry went on, "We have all of the pieces, although it's still possible this won't work." 

Charlie unpacked a cauldron--a good one, thick and even--and put it over the fire, then filled it with water and started dropping things in. Kingsley couldn't see what, but he went cold. "Possible _what_ won't work?"

Harry shrugged. "Bill can drag the second mind out. I know how to restore mind to body. The sticking points were life and identifying the appropriate enemy, but we think we've worked that out." He nodded at Bill, who opened his knapsack and drew out two smaller bags, one of them filled with a teeming mass of great beetles. "They're alive, and with the other precautions we've taken, the Snape aspect of the transformation will override the beetle part." Bill set the beetles down and pulled a quill and scroll out of the other small bag and started sketching out a pattern.

Kingsley stared, feeling as though he were watching from afar as a horrible scene played out, himself helpless to affect it. "You mean to--"

"I was there, sir, in the graveyard. I might as well use what I learned for good, right?" Harry stood and leaned over Charlie. "Ready?"

"As ready as we can be," Charlie said.

"Right, then." Harry opened his own bag and pulled out a human thighbone. "Bones of the father, right? He wasn't that difficult to find." He added the bone to the cauldron. "Flesh of the servant was something of a problem, but then, it only matters that the intent is good, I think, so mine will do." He made to slice off the fingers of his left hand, but Charlie grabbed his wrist. 

"May I?"

"May you what?"

"I'll lose fingers eventually anyway, my line of work. Now's as good a time as any."

"But--"

Bill rolled his eyes. "Fine, a couple of fingers from each of you; stop interrupting." Harry and Charlie looked at each other and nodded, then each severed the last two fingers from the other's left hand. They hit the water and sparked, and Harry nodded with satisfaction. Each of them worked a quick healing charm on the other, and Kingsley pressed his lips together, his stomach churning.

"Harry, this is a terrible idea," Kingsley said. His stomach turned over entirely as the smell of boiling flesh hit him, but it didn't seem to matter. 

"Blood of the enemy-- this part was a little bit ethically gray," Harry said, as though the entire operation were not. He pulled out a great vial. "It had to be forcibly taken, of course. That's in the ritual, and it's one part we didn't feel comfortable changing at all. But, there were certainly plenty of people in custody and since you--you, Snape--were of course their enemy all along, it should work. We've strengthened this aspect some because of the beetles, so there's some from Avery, some from Lucius Malfoy, some from that fucker with the terrible skin. None from Greyback; I remember how you feel about werewolves." He dumped the vial into the cauldron, then followed it quickly with a partially-decomposed human skull floated in with his wand. "That was yours, I'm afraid," he said. "Yuck. And now…" He glanced at Bill, who held up his sketched-out runes, and upended the bag of beetles into the broth. 

Bill spoke a long sequence that Kingsley felt he ought to be able to follow--but it was as though his ears were stuffed with cotton, and his feet felt numb. 

And then, a figure of smoke and billowing steam rose from the cauldron, turning itself inside out and screaming as it writhed. 

And then, there was nothing.

\//\\\/

Kingsley woke slowly to a disorienting array of images in his head. 

"How are you feeling, Minister?" That was Harry, and Kingsley tried to open his eyes, tried to speak, but he was distracted immediately by the sound of his own voice. 

"Better than I've felt in quite some time, honestly," his voice said. "Harry, I don't know how to thank you."

Kingsley pried one eye open. He was on the floor, in a heap, naked under a blanket. He groaned.

"Snape?" Harry was there immediately, helping him to roll over and sit up. "I wasn't sure how long you'd be out. Do you remember what we did?"

Kingsley looked around, confused, at his own face on the body in the chair from earlier; at his pale skeletal hands, at his scrawny, knobby elbows and knees. "I'm…" He didn't know where to begin. The images in his head were growing, overwhelming him: himself, bent over Harry's bed in a scene he inexplicably knew had taken place several weeks prior, prodding his dreams to recollect floating letters and graveyard nightmares. His hands tracing Evan Ames onto a wall. Andromeda, startled and afraid until he'd cast the charms to still her. "I'm Shacklebolt," he croaked.

"Yes, you've been tangled together for quite a long time," Charlie said. "We thought it might take a bit for you to come back to yourself."

Kingsley shook his head, both against what Charlie was saying, and against the crowding, rising images in his mind, images that were spooling in and erasing themselves even as he watched them. He saw Percy, rearranging his schedule a hundred times to cover trips he didn't know he'd taken. He saw Bill and Fleur, fucking while Kingsley waited in the shadows outside their window for the moment they'd be unresisting to his planted suggestions. He saw Harry, shivering in his cloak as he watched Kingsley carve shapes in the wall, saw himself in the mirror, practicing mannerisms that were his own, saw himself lost in internal debate over whether to mention any of this and always choosing against--and wasn't that a fucking disaster; he could prove nothing.

And then all of that faded, only to be replaced by more--trips into Central Europe, ostensibly to reassure ministers he never met and actually to find Charlie Weasley in a pub and plant suggestions there as well. Outings across Britain and even once to India for ingredients he'd never heard of. Hours in the cellar of his building, in a room that didn't exist to Muggle eyes, brewing… what had he been brewing? 

He looked up at his own eyes. He was staring back at himself, fingers minutely waving in a pattern that felt familiar and strange, and all the images in his mind receded into one. He was Severus Snape. Only, he wasn't. But his memory said maybe he was.

He shook his head again, violent this time, and tried to stand, his body weak and thin, his skin nearly translucent. "I--"

"Snape," his own voice said. "We've been in each other's thoughts too long. I feel some of you in me, as well." He paused. "You've had a difficult time of it. The Ministry apologized, but now I offer my own apology for misapprehending the depth of your service." Kingsley already felt so very strange, but hearing himself apologizing to... him, for the ways in which they all hadn't done enough for Snape left him furious, and he wondered what in the world he could do to fix this.

He wet his thin strange lips. "Harry, ask me. Ask me anything. I'm Shacklebolt." Christ, he didn't sound like himself. His words were sneered, nasal, furious, thin. 

Harry's brow furrowed, but he asked a couple of questions, easy things that Snape would know the answers to anyway, and it occurred to Kingsley that there hadn't been all that many occasions in which he and the boy had been together without Snape. 

"Ask me about the wedding," he prompted. He looked at Bill. "His wedding."

Bill shook his head. "You weren't there, Snape, and neither was he. You're confused."

Damn it. 

His body chuckled across the room, and Merlin, _that_ was how he was supposed to sound. The images in his head receded further, as though they were film, and coming to the forefront were other images: himself, trapped in the Malfoy residence as they all waited for the Dark Lord. Himself, casting one Unforgiveable curse after another because he had no choice. Himself, following Harry into the forest, to a lake, with a sword. Himself, watching Kingsley Shacklebolt work to alter the memories of a girl in the Headmaster's office.

He glanced at the working fingers again, and gasped, considering the potion he'd brewed, the potion that he'd never heard of, intended to dissociate one's body and mind. He saw the notes in the scrawling hand, crabbed and thin with lines marked through and quantities rubbed out and replaced time and again. "I…"

"We'll see you to St. Mungo's," Bill said, friendly as he might be to a frightened child. "They'll sort you out."

Kingsley tried one more time. "Harry, please. You have the Legilimency skills--"

Harry frowned slightly and shrugged. " _Legilimens_. Oh, Snape. It's all right." His eyes had gone wide and soft. Kingsley couldn't feel him as he had before, but Harry clearly saw something, something which aroused pity. "I can't blame you for being afraid--no, I know, you were one of the bravest men I knew. Still. You have to have just latched onto whatever you could, and it took us a long time to work it out. This is disorientating and confusing. St. Mungo's will work on that, too." After a moment, he put down his wand. "Sir, you know I'm stubborn. I'll make sure you get the best care." And then he turned back to the other Kingsley. "And you can get back to work," he said. 

"And are you comfortable, Harry, keeping this between the lot of us?" Kingsley's voice asked. "I fear the people would… I fear it would be too much, to learn I had been compromised."

"You can count on us, sir," Harry said. Bill and Charlie nodded, and between them they held Kingsley (Snape, they thought he was Snape, and what the _fuck_ was he going to do?) upright as they Apparated him away to the hospital.

As soon as they left Grimmauld Place, his head sagged, and his body fell limp; by the time they left him with the night nurses, his head was swimming again and he could hear Snape's voice trying to explain who he was even as every clear image of his own life dropped away like it was in a book or a Muggle film. 

At last, he fell quiet. "Charlie," he said.

Charlie was still in the room, long after Bill had gone home to his wife. "Yeah?"

"Make sure Harry's all right, will you?" He couldn’t explain why leaving the boy alone with a Snape they thought was the Minister was wrong, but he could ask this. "It's been a taxing night, and now that I can't look after him--"

"He's an adult, Snape."

"I know. Still, I've been watching him a long time. Please? At least… see to his hand. And yours."

Charlie nodded and went to the door, and Kingsley sat, alone with the thoughts that weren't his, and wondered how he was going to proceed.

Or whether he had any choice. His memories were going grayer with every minute, and those that felt foreign--a sour-looking girl watching her bright-haired sister at the park; a terrifying moment upside-down; a furious conversation with Igor Karkaroff over stores in a closet--felt wrong, but true none the less.

He lay down and pulled up the blanket over his chin, and tried to work out what the long game might be. The less he tried to convince himself of which memories belonged to him, the less anything faded, so he put that out of his mind and waited for breakfast.

Snape had been a spy in this body.

And now Kingsley would be one, too.


End file.
